Eye for an Eye: The Role of Armed Resistance ... - Freedom Archives

from advocates of armed self-defense in the Black liberation movement in the
South, their examples are limited to the efforts of Robert F Williams' armed
guards in Monroe, North Carolina and the para-military Deacons for Defense and
Justice in Bogalusa, Louisiana . Confining the role of Black armed resistance to
the Monroe and Bogalusa movements without mention of self-defense and para-
military efforts throughout the South paints an incomplete picture of Black resis-
tance . Armed resistance was a pervasive response in the Southern movement, not
an anomaly.
Some recent works have done a better job of documenting the role of
armed resistance in the Mississippi freedom movement. Among these works, John
Dittmer's Local People and Charles Payne's I Got the Light of Freedom, mention
several occurrences of armed self-defense . Both are important contributions on
the Civil Rights Movement, yet both authors underplay the role and development
of armed resistance in the Mississippi struggle. While Dittmer mentions the
existence of the Natchez Deacons for Defense and Justice, he does not detail the
importance of this organization for the success of the economic boycott organized
by the NAACP in Natchez . Local People does not address the development of
para-military teams to enforce the Natchez boycott . Enforcer groups were essen-
tial to the success of boycotts on Mississippi . Dittmer also describes Natchez as
the last major campaign in Mississippi, but even after Natchez major campaigns
were organized in Mississippi cities like Hattiesburg and Port Gibson that in-
cluded para-military organizations . Payne's work primarily covers campaigns in
the Mississippi delta and does not look at the post-1965 development of para-
military organizations like the Deacons and boycott enforcer groups .